I’ve probably blogged on this a load of times, but it’s always worth a brag. I was watching Pokey’s microstakes video which is a bit dated but still worth a view. He steals using minraises from the button which TBH isn’t that good at microstakes – limpers are quite likely to go that extra blind since it’s no biggy for them and they love to see the flop. At higher stakes I can imagine it’s fine as most people understand position enough to fold, and keeping the price of stealing that low pretty much guarantees it’s profitable.
Anyway, I decided to do a quick check on PokerTracker to see if my stealing is going ok – I’m a relentless blind stealer and even a constant 3bet defender won’t put me off (especially as all it takes is the odd decent hand against a manic 3betting blind to make it super profitable). Here are the results since April, filtered for stealing opportunities where I raised;
Since I rarely decide not to steal (if both blinds are 64 vpip types I might not, or against a manic 3bettor I admit I do tighten up a bit), it’s obvious that stealing pays – 39BB/100!! It’s almost worth just stealing and not playing any other hands (apart from that being insanely dull).
Position stats;
Position 1 is cutoff, and it’s always worth watching out for that ultratight player on your left who lets you steal through the button – extremely worth it in fact, you can see from the positional stats that it’s a higher BB/hand rate. Mainly this is because the button is just so obviously a stealing position that blinds give it a lot less credit than they should, while the CO is seen as a regular position and will respect your raise 
. I’m not a big fan of stealing from the small blind though – you’re generally only gaining one big blind while risking three and you’re OOP if called. Not a big enough deal to make a fuss about…
5
4
Q
(
). Frustrating since I know without doing that (and without the bad beat), I’d have won a big pile today…
